#Tag
The enormous sweep of last year’s #SCOTUS decision granting #Trump substantial #immunity from prosecution is apparent in this argument, where there has been repeated reference to that decision’s expansive vision of presidential #power.
#law #HumphreysExecutor #ActivistCourt #Autocracy #ExecutiveBranch #SeparationOfPowers #Congress 🧵
The Sinking Fund Commission has come up several times. Historians & legal scholars regard it as the nation’s first #independent agency. Created in 1790 by the first #Congress, the 5-member commission approved payments to settle America’s Revolutionary War debts.
The commission’s structure was proposed by #AlexanderHamilton, who saw it as a way to insulate members from #political pressures.
#law #HumphreysExecutor #SCOTUS #ActivistCourt #Trump #Autocracy #power #SeparationOfPowers 🧵
The group included some members – like the vice president – who could not be fired at will by the president. #Hamilton, then the Treasury Secy, served on the first Sinking Fund Commission alongside Secy of State #ThomasJefferson, his bitter political rival.
#law #HumphreysExecutor #SCOTUS #ActivistCourt #Trump #Autocracy #power #ExecutiveBranch #SeparationOfPowers #Congress 🧵
Justice Kagan [I think, maybe it was Sotomayor] just gave Amit Agarwal, the lawyer for fired FTC commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, the opening needed to discuss Professor Caleb Nelson’s article on the “unitary executive theory” I mentioned & linked earlier in the thread. ↑→
https://masto.ai/@Nonilex/115684689986721167
#law #HumphreysExecutor #SCOTUS #ActivistCourt #Trump #Autocracy #power #ExecutiveBranch #SeparationOfPowers #Congress 🧵
The Sinking Fund Commission has come up several times. Historians & legal scholars regard it as the nation’s first #independent agency. Created in 1790 by the first #Congress, the 5-member commission approved payments to settle America’s Revolutionary War debts.
The commission’s structure was proposed by #AlexanderHamilton, who saw it as a way to insulate members from #political pressures.
#law #HumphreysExecutor #SCOTUS #ActivistCourt #Trump #Autocracy #power #SeparationOfPowers 🧵
Justice #Kavanaugh pushes the lawyer for the fired #FTC commissioner Rebecca Slaughter about the #Trump admin’s argument that “independent agencies are not accountable to the people.” The justice asked how the lawyer would respond to the argument that “they’re not elected as #Congress & the President are, & are exercising massive power over individual liberty & billion dollar industries.”
#law #HumphreysExecutor #SCOTUS #ActivistCourt #Autocracy #power #ExecutiveBranch #SeparationOfPowers 🧵
Justice Kagan [I think, maybe it was Sotomayor] just gave Amit Agarwal, the lawyer for fired FTC commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, the opening needed to discuss Professor Caleb Nelson’s article on the “unitary executive theory” I mentioned & linked earlier in the thread. ↑→
https://masto.ai/@Nonilex/115684689986721167
#law #HumphreysExecutor #SCOTUS #ActivistCourt #Trump #Autocracy #power #ExecutiveBranch #SeparationOfPowers #Congress 🧵
The enormous sweep of last year’s #SCOTUS decision granting #Trump substantial #immunity from prosecution is apparent in this argument, where there has been repeated reference to that decision’s expansive vision of presidential #power.
#law #HumphreysExecutor #ActivistCourt #Autocracy #ExecutiveBranch #SeparationOfPowers #Congress 🧵
Justice #Kavanaugh pushes the lawyer for the fired #FTC commissioner Rebecca Slaughter about the #Trump admin’s argument that “independent agencies are not accountable to the people.” The justice asked how the lawyer would respond to the argument that “they’re not elected as #Congress & the President are, & are exercising massive power over individual liberty & billion dollar industries.”
#law #HumphreysExecutor #SCOTUS #ActivistCourt #Autocracy #power #ExecutiveBranch #SeparationOfPowers 🧵
#SCOTUS has ruled #Congress cannot limit the president’s #power to fire agencies led by a single official. The question before the court today is if it can insulate members of multi-member commissions from removal.
In 2020, in ruling Congress could not limit the president’s power to fire the head of the #CFPB, CJ #JohnRoberts wrote the ruling “does not foreclose Congress from pursuing alternative responses to the problem—for example, converting the CFPB into a multimember agency.”
The lawyer for fired FTC commissioner Rebecca Slaughter argued that a decision by the justices allowing the president the #power to fire leaders of #independent agencies meant that “everything is on the chopping block.” Justice #Alito immediately jumped in, saying that he was skeptical that ruling would lead to such sweeping ramifications.
#law #HumphreysExecutor #ActivistCourt #Trump #Autocracy #ExecutiveBranch #SeparationOfPowers #Congress 🧵
The enormous sweep of last year’s #SCOTUS decision granting #Trump substantial #immunity from prosecution is apparent in this argument, where there has been repeated reference to that decision’s expansive vision of presidential #power.
#law #HumphreysExecutor #ActivistCourt #Autocracy #ExecutiveBranch #SeparationOfPowers #Congress 🧵
The lawyer for fired FTC commissioner Rebecca Slaughter argued that a decision by the justices allowing the president the #power to fire leaders of #independent agencies meant that “everything is on the chopping block.” Justice #Alito immediately jumped in, saying that he was skeptical that ruling would lead to such sweeping ramifications.
#law #HumphreysExecutor #ActivistCourt #Trump #Autocracy #ExecutiveBranch #SeparationOfPowers #Congress 🧵
The lawyer for fired FTC commissioner Rebecca Slaughter argued that a decision by the justices allowing the president the #power to fire leaders of #independent agencies meant that “everything is on the chopping block.” Justice #Alito immediately jumped in, saying that he was skeptical that ruling would lead to such sweeping ramifications.
#law #HumphreysExecutor #ActivistCourt #Trump #Autocracy #ExecutiveBranch #SeparationOfPowers #Congress 🧵
#SCOTUS has ruled #Congress cannot limit the president’s #power to fire agencies led by a single official. The question before the court today is if it can insulate members of multi-member commissions from removal.
In 2020, in ruling Congress could not limit the president’s power to fire the head of the #CFPB, CJ #JohnRoberts wrote the ruling “does not foreclose Congress from pursuing alternative responses to the problem—for example, converting the CFPB into a multimember agency.”
But the question is not whether allowing limits on the president’s power to fire officials is sensible, Professor Nelson wrote.
“I am an originalist, & if the original meaning of the #Constitution compelled this outcome, I would be inclined to agree that the Supreme Court should respect it until the Constitution is amended through the proper processes,” he wrote.
But the textual & historical evidence is “far more equivocal than the current court has been suggesting,” he wrote.
Back to the courtroom [done w/discussion of Nelson’s article]
Justice Elena Kagan says independent agencies do a lot of legislating & a lot of judging [I would say regulating, not “legislating & judging, but that’s me]. Giving the president unfettered authority over them, she says, would concentrate “massive unchecked power” in the #ExecutiveBranch, at odds with the #SeparationOfPowers.
#law #HumphreysExecutor #SCOTUS #ActivistCourt #Trump #Autocracy #power #Congress 🧵
Nelson’s September article was repeatedly cited by lawyers for Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, the member of the #FTC whose firing is at issue in Monday’s case, in her main #SCOTUS brief. In reply, lawyers for #Trump wrote that Ms. Slaughter’s brief “rehashes objections to the removal power” from a “recent essay by Professor Caleb Nelson.”
#law #HumphreysExecutor #ActivistCourt #Autocracy #power #ExecutiveBranch #SeparationOfPowers #Congress 🧵
Professor Nelson’s article acknowledged that #SCOTUS “appears to be moving toward a sweepingly pro-president position.”
Letting the president fire ofcls “for reasons good or bad,” Nelson wrote, would grant him “an enormous amount of #power —more power, I think, than any sensible person should want anyone to have, & more power than any member of the founding generation could have anticipated.”
#law #HumphreysExecutor #SCOTUS #ActivistCourt #Trump #ExecutiveBranch #SeparationOfPowers #Congress 🧵
Professor Nelson, who teaches at the University of Virginia and served as a law clerk to Justice #ClarenceThomas, has been exceptionally influential. His scholarship has been cited in more than a dozen #SCOTUS opinions & by every member of the 6-justice conservative majority.
#law #HumphreysExecutor #ActivistCourt #Trump #Autocracy #power #ExecutiveBranch #SeparationOfPowers #Congress 🧵
Nelson’s September article was repeatedly cited by lawyers for Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, the member of the #FTC whose firing is at issue in Monday’s case, in her main #SCOTUS brief. In reply, lawyers for #Trump wrote that Ms. Slaughter’s brief “rehashes objections to the removal power” from a “recent essay by Professor Caleb Nelson.”
#law #HumphreysExecutor #ActivistCourt #Autocracy #power #ExecutiveBranch #SeparationOfPowers #Congress 🧵
Professor Nelson, who teaches at the University of Virginia and served as a law clerk to Justice #ClarenceThomas, has been exceptionally influential. His scholarship has been cited in more than a dozen #SCOTUS opinions & by every member of the 6-justice conservative majority.
#law #HumphreysExecutor #ActivistCourt #Trump #Autocracy #power #ExecutiveBranch #SeparationOfPowers #Congress 🧵
#Trump is once again asking #SCOTUS to expand his #power as the justices on Monday consider whether he can fire #independent government officials insulated by #laws meant to shield them from #politics.
The case involves Trump’s firing of a commissioner on the #FTC & a landmark decision from 1935, which said that #Congress could put limits on the president’s authority to remove some executive branch officials.
#law #HumphreysExecutor #ActivistCourt #Autocracy
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/12/08/us/trump-supreme-court-presidential-power?smid=nytcore-ios-share
The conservative legal movement has long argued an originalist understanding of the #Constitution — an interpretation that looks to how the document was understood at the time of the nation’s founding—demands letting the president remove #ExecutiveBranch officials as he sees fit. The so-called “unitary executive theory,” says the president should have complete control of the exec branch & congressional efforts to shield leaders of #independent agencies from #politics should be forbidden.
#law 🧵
In Sept, though, a leading originalist law professor, Caleb E. Nelson, challenged that wisdom in an article that attracted attention in legal circles & beyond. He wrote that the text of the #Constitution & the historical evidence surrounding it in fact grant #Congress broad authority to shape the #ExecutiveBranch, including by putting limits on the president’s #power to fire people.
#law #HumphreysExecutor #SCOTUS #ActivistCourt #Trump #Autocracy #SeparationOfPowers 🧵
https://democracyproject.org/posts/must-administrative-officers-serve-at-the-presidents-pleasure
Sauer is quick to try to carve out the #FederalReserve, saying the admin has not challenged congressional limitations on the president’s #power to remove its members.
But that has started a long back & forth between several Justices & Sauer about which agencies would not be subject to a decision in favor of #Trump.
There are hundreds of “ #independent” federal agencies.
#law #HumphreysExecutor #SCOTUS #ActivistCourt #Trump #Autocracy #ExecutiveBranch #SeparationOfPowers #Congress 🧵
#Sotomayor added, “You’re asking us to destroy the structure of government” & “to take away from #Congress its ability” to decide the “government is better structured with some agencies that are #independent.”
#law #HumphreysExecutor #SCOTUS #ActivistCourt #Trump #Autocracy #ExecutiveBranch #power 🧵
Justice Sonia #Sotomayor says #SCOTUS should be wary of overturning a 90-year-old precedent that established the very structure of the modern #FederalGovernment.
Sotomayor appears sharply skeptical of the #Trump admin’s argument that the president has the #power to fire the leaders of #independent agencies. “You’re asking us to overturn a case that has been around for over 100, nearly 100 years. Correct?”
#law #HumphreysExecutor #SCOTUS #ActivistCourt #Autocracy #ExecutiveBranch 🧵
Federal laws requiring presidents to show cause are, on the other hand, commonplace. More than 30 statutes say that leaders of executive agencies can be removed only for some combination of the same factors cited in the #law shielding #FTC commissioners like Ms. Slaughter. Another 20 or so, like the one governing the #FederalReserve Board, say only that agency leaders may be removed “for cause,” without elaboration.
Arguments have started 🧵
Trump’s Solicitor General D. John Sauer opened his argument by calling the court’s landmark decision in the 1935 case #HumphreysExecutor “an indefensible outlier.” He called the case “a decaying husk with bold & particularly dangerous pretensions” that was “grievously wrong” when it was decided.
Again. This was a landmark decision that has stood for 90 years.
#law #SCOTUS #ActivistCourt #Trump #Autocracy #ExecutiveBranch #power
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